HP EliteBook 8530w and 8730w
(Credit: CNET Networks)LOS ANGELES--This week's Siggraph conference attracted a diverse crowd of graphic designers, animators, and industrial designers, and both HP and Lenovo were on-site to show off their new mobile workstations for graphics professionals. I had a chance to meet with both companies at the show to talk about some of the key features of these new models.
HP started the week by announcing the 17-inch EliteBook 8730w and 15.4-inch EliteBook 8530w, both of which support Intel's not-yet-official quad-core Core 2 Extreme processors, 8GB of RAM, and Nvidia's next-generation Quadro FX cards with up to 1GB of VRAM. In addition, these latest EliteBooks feature a few small design enhancements, such as a new latch designed to reduce stress on the display and a special coating on the keys and touch pad to help prevent wear. Even cooler is the VGA camera on the display bezel, which pairs with included software to double as a business card reader.
The EliteBook 8730w is also the first workstation on the market to include an HP DreamColor display option. The RGB backlit-LED screen can display millions of colors and displays true color even when the screen is dimmed. I got a quick demo of the EliteBook 8730w and I was impressed with not only the stunning color quality but also the ease of switching back and forth between sRGB and Adobe RGB on the display.
Also remarkable: both the 15- and 17-inch EliteBooks were quite thin and sleek, especially for such high-powered machines.
The ThinkPad W700's built-in drawing tablet
(Credit: CNET Networks)After HP I moved on to get a glance at Lenovo's ThinkPad W700 workstation, which was announced Tuesday. The beast was even larger than I'd imagined; after all, Lenovo representatives have emphasized that it's a workstation first, and mobile computer second. It's obviously larger than HP's 17-inch workstation, but the ThinkPad W700 also packs some bonus features: a built-in color calibrator and an integrated digitizer pad next to the touch pad.
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Hewlett-Packard )
At its Connecting the World event in Berlin, Germany, HP unveiled the first DreamColor monitor from its partnership with DreamWorks. The DreamColor LP2480xz is a 24-inch LCD that will set you or your design shop back $3,500. For the money, you get 30-bit color for over 1 billion color possibilities (standard LCDs are 24-bit for 16.7 million color options). HP says you will see deeper reds, blues, and greens when standing next to a run-of-the-mill consumer LCD, while blacks will appear four times darker and whites are adjustable.
The DreamColor LP2480xz features a 1920x1200 native resolution, LED backlighting, and seven image presets (including one programmable), plus a night vision mode for working in a darkroom. Video connections include HDMI, DisplayPort, component, S-video, and composite. A four-port USB hub is also on board.
Before you get any grand ideas about putting this display on your desk, be sure you get yourself a workstation-class graphics card to take advantage of its 30-bit color. And it doesn't look like the best choice of overspending on a gaming display; its 6ms gray-to-gray pixel response time is slower than the 2ms response time you can find on consumer LCDs. But if your job depends on creating content with consistently accurate colors, the DreamColor might allow you to replace those honkin' CRTs in the office.
Though CRT monitors have been made practically obsolete for consumers by the LCD industry, a few industries--photography/visual design/filmmaking--still cling to them for their nonpareil color quality.
Hewlett-Packard is trying to loosen their grip on those clunky desktop space-hoggers by offering a liquid crystal display for visual artist types that boasts the ability to show 1 billion colors for "one quarter" of the cost of other LCD monitors in this category.
At the National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas on Monday, Todd Bradley, vice president of HP's Personal Systems Group, announced that HP has teamed up with DreamWorks for a technology it calls DreamColor.
It will offer 30-bit color using LED-backlighting technology on a widescreen display that will work with a Mac or PC--not just HP products. The displays are intended to keep colors consistent throughout the creative process: from a display on a workstation to film and/or to print. Printers with DreamColor technology were introduced last year.
HP says it's only a "preview" announcement, which means it's not announcing pricing yet. The displays are scheduled to start shipping this summer.
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